Anna Sussman

Out on the fire trucks, Amika and the other women are basically heroes, pulling children out of crumpled cars, climbing into burning homes with a hose and an axe, picking up elderly folks who had fallen in their kitchens.

Saving the lives of their jailers and their families.

When they ride past schoolyards with fire truck lights spinning, kids cheer.

And then they drive into the prison gates.

Before Amika was inmate X32168, she lived in the mountains of Kern County, California, in a three-bedroom house.

Amika was 29 years old and she had three kids.

And she had just moved to the countryside to try to slow down and focus on her kids and focus on being a mom.

She'd walk her older kids to the school bus every morning, and on weekends, they'd go hunt for snakes or go to her son's football games.

And then, on a warm night in October 2008, driving down Lincoln Avenue in Cypress, California, everything changed.

Amika had a broken pelvis, a lacerated liver, and a punctured lung.

From the hospital, after multiple surgeries, she was led into a sheriff's van and taken to the Orange County Jail.

She was put into an isolation cell.

Over the next days and weeks in the Orange County Jail, she was moved into a medical unit to recover from the accident and the surgeries.

And from there, she was moved to a two-person cell.

She was allowed into a day room for two hours, where she could read the newspaper and shower, and then she was returned to her small cell.

Eventually, she was given a public defender and told more details about the case against her.

She could be convicted of second-degree murder.

She waited in the county jail month after month.

The only way she could have seen her kids would have been in a visiting room separated by a thick glass window.

Than not seeing them?